“A wizard’s duel,” Easy says to the eleven onlookers, “is as old as the forest. One move answers another, an arrow in flight that knocks the opponent’s aside.”

“A duel of rhyme,” I say, picking up from her pause in the assumption that she’s cueing me, “is as old as well. The intent is that each verse answers the last, a refutation and attack at the same time.”

“We will be constructing spellforms through song, chant, or spoken verse. These spellforms must be no fewer than two and no more than six lines of length, each line being of no fewer than five syllables, with at least one perfect terminal rhyme within the stanza.” Easy nods at me. “By the Magelord’s request, identical rhymes are only permitted if they are oronymic.”

“We’re going for basic cromulence, not for excellence, as a general rule, but if ten of you—or the opponent—rule that a verse is just that good, the other has to drop two verses, distinct ones, instead of one. For a regular success, it just takes five out of eleven, or the opponent treating it as one.”

“We will begin with one hundred and fifty seconds, two and a half minutes, for each exchange. At the conclusion of every tenth exchange, should the Magelord last so long,” and she’s definitely smirking at that, “the time will be reduced by thirty seconds.”

We wait, at that point, to see if the audience has any questions. They probably won’t; it’s not exactly a traditional duel-form, but as a hybrid of two traditional forms it’s neither unheard of nor particularly complicated. Still, giving them time gives us time to situate ourselves and relax a little, which is welcome.

It’s a small room, made to feel all the smaller by having thirteen people in it. Not overly warm or stuffy, not the way it would be if we were relying on mundane air circulation, but Easy and I each only have about a meter’s radius of space around us, and the audience of eleven is knee-to-knee in small chairs. Intimate is probably the best word for it; an intimate setting for a similarly intimate duel.

The space is made even smaller by the narrow pillar between us, and the orb that rests on it. It flashes through its demonstration sequence, which we’ve already been briefed on; blue to purple to red for two stanzas, yellow to amber to red for one stanza, five pulses at a rate of one per second for the last five seconds of the allotted time.

Show time.

Half of the orb, the half facing me, lights up yellow. I breathe deeply—in for a count of five, out for a count of five—and open the battle with something simple. Simplistic, even.

“Claws of flame, claws of fire,” I intone softly, “rake your face; now your pyre.”

My spell, utterly basic and weak as it is, forms in wavering lines above the orb. Easy taps her chest with a loose fist, down at her sternum, and my side of the orb goes dark as hers goes yellow. There’s a ring of little lights at the exact center line, a circle of eleven little indicators demarcated in green, and they all light up amber in the moments after I’m done. It’s not a brilliant opener by any means, but it’s valid, and that’s reflected in Easy’s acknowledgement and the immediate pass the audience gives it.

“Rage, waters of the ocean, and rise.” Easy gives it the same five-and-five count as I did, mirroring my cadence without doing anything so fussy as taking a deep breath. She even matches my pitch-pattern, rising and then falling in the harmonic minor that remains the liturgical mode of the Faith, whether Void or Old. “Drown his flames, and strike your prize.”

Water surges, flowing through the five burning lines of my own spell. In the moment after she stops, even as the display has barely started moving, I tap my chest in a mimicry of her own motion, and the light on her side blinks out as the one on mine turns on.

“It swims through the water, happy as can be; it bites, it strikes, one, two, three.” This one is sing-song, like a creche-rhyme, and Easy fails to suppress a snicker.

“Bite as it may, the shark will flee the dolphin. Its scream warns the pack, the killer of whales is back; swim, fast as life, away from the dire fins.”

For some reason, I’m grinning. I’m not even sure why. “Don’t fret; the net, hunger all whet, gathers sharp strands to sever your bet.”

“The vartansha slips, quiet, serene, through the fingers that claw and the fingers that catch. The barest sting, the barest touch, and in awe we watch you blaze as a match.”

This is, frankly, an obviously losing battle. I take my time, carefully constructing my next rhyme, but Easy has just dropped them after a performative opening pause, one after another. I don’t really care, though. “In water, a fish flies; on land, a fish dies.”

“The bones of the world run deep and strong. Grind, grind, push and pull, over and under; crack and cave, smoke and blast all asunder. Flesh of the world burns: a volcano.”

We’re not even really following the dictates of the challenge. These aren’t the attack spells of the wizard’s duel that we’d discussed anymore; this is just meaning and verse and the implication of victory, and I could object, if I were minded to.

So could Easy.

“Time grinds even a mountain to dust. The end of an age, thus ends every cage; we live as long and do all that which we must.”

Instead, we’re both smiling, both in love with this moment and this performance, a performance for ourselves, for each other, for this small audience.

“—above us, which shines in the sky, will even in its vastness and glory die; all things fade, and every cycle turns, as your flame gutters and your last breath burns.”

“Rage, rage, at entropy’s claim. The void and the world, each and every universe, are all one and the same; as fades the day, touch the source—”

Filled with a soaring, shining joy, we strike, and we strike, and the pace picks up.

“—blade of frost, blade of ice, striking swift and sure—”

“—aegis that guards, aegis that sheds the blow, and more—”

Easy slowly loses the smirk and her original posture as we do. I’m struggling a little by the time we’re ten exchanges deep, and struggling more than a little by the time we’re twenty.

“—rolling into dark, rolling into the night, as day becomes final dusk—”

“—railing, wailing, weeping, and yet ravage it does—”

“—as we sing and dance, and these creatures entrance, to turn and turn—”

“—the light that scours—”

“—circuits that flash for the power they contain—”

By the time the third block of thirty seconds drops out of the time allotment, I’m running through pre-prepared couplets and rhymes like water going through my fingers. Just getting to thirty exchanges winds up being almost more than I have in me to pull off, but I’ve managed one double-value spell-song, a clever thing made out of dactyls and stuffed with internal rhymes that had Easy slam her fists into her thighs before double-tapping her chest with her fist, overruling the 9-2 vote of the audience. Easy’s managed two, and both of them resonate in me for how ridiculously clever they are, their memory throwing me off.

I still somehow make it to forty exchanges.

“—matrix stable of carbon’s able to cut a beam of light; against flesh, against steel—”

“—hand that moves the blade by an eye be guided. But what if shifted, your very senses lie—”

I fumble the third exchange in the thirty-second time block. There was a culture on the Spirit, or more accurately in the Voidfaith subculture of the Spirit, of rewriting blessings and prayers on the fly to reflect some sort of truth of the moment, something pure and present, and that carried me for a while, but my storage tanks have gone empty, my reservoirs dry. I managed to eke one last one out, picking up as the last of the light starts blinking and finding one last almost-too-awkward rhyme to sling the bombship to the other side of the wormhole, but while Easy has long since lost her performative five-second-and-only-that pause between stanzas, she manages to launch it back my way within the twenty-second window.

Mind blank, I cast around for something, anything that I can use to “beat” her spell. I get as far as “void” but, struggling to find the rhyme, land too late on “alloyed”, and the light goes dark as I run out of time.

I stagger a little as the tension drains, hard and fast. I’ve got enough social grace in me to remember the fists together twice thing which signifies that I acknowledge she’s beaten me and I respect her for it, or something along those lines, and then she’s clasping my arm and pulling me into an embrace.

She’s laughing, laughing in what even I can tell is joy, and I’m laughing with her.

I’ve lost this placement round, but hullbreak and dearth, I can’t find it in me to care.